Originally published in Japanese: Tokyo : Shinchōsha, 1937. Told in two voices, fifteen-year-old Copper struggles to confront inevitable and enormous change after his father's death and his uncle writes to him in a journal, sharing knowledge and advice in 1937 Japan.

Seventeen-year-old Arden, of Cumberland, Maryland, finds solace in the blog of an aspiring writer who lives in New York City, but when she goes to meet him, she discovers that he is a very different person than she believes him to be.